the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
by Forever-Diamonds
Summary: A Will Graham centric one shot, focussing on his thoughts throughout S1 and his relationships with all the other characters


"Can I borrow your imagination?"

That question spells danger as soon as it's asked, Will should have realised. He should have backed away, should have said no, and let the FBI do their own work while he sat in his classroom behind a desk where he was mostly safe. But he can't say no, never has been able to, so instead he nods like a house-trained puppy and follows Jack Crawford's every command. It must be the do-gooder in him, the in-suppressible desire to help people and save lives. If he's the only one that can help catch maniacs and psychopaths, then his already unstable mind is a small price to pay for that.

It's only a few hours later as he stands over Cassie Boyle's body mounted on a stag's head in the middle of a field with her lungs removed like meat from an animal carcass, that he realises exactly what path he's started following.

Jack introduces him to Hannibal early on, brings them together in his office under the pretence of 'putting their minds together about the case'. They sit and make small talk and Will tries desperately to avoid eye contact because eyes are too revealing, too much for him, and Hannibal turns on him, eyes sharp and grin-cat like and asks him _questions_, the kind that make Will's skin crawl and make him feel like a caged animal in a zoo, brought out so that people can poke him with sticks and gain amusement from him.

"Don't psychoanalyse me," he almost spits across Jack's desk. "You won't like me when I'm psychoanalysed."

Hannibal coming to his house for breakfast, of all things, is something of a shock, but Will sighs and steps aside to let him pass. He doesn't have many visitors to his tiny house, he's always preferred the company of his dogs to that of people, but there's a look in this stranger's eye that tells Will that he won't accept no as an answer. Whilst he doesn't know the doctor very well, there's something lurking beneath that seemingly unflappable countenance that Will can't quite put his finger on yet. He can assume the point of view of any person he wishes, and while this still applies to Hannibal for some reason Will can't quite get inside his head like he normally does. It's disconcerting but also enthralling at the same time. Will may not be a people person but he likes a challenge, and whilst he may not yet like or trust Hannibal the man is certainly that, _a challenge_.

"I don't find you that interesting," he informs the psychiatrist in an apathetic tone.

"You will."

As the cases he takes on get more and more disturbing, Will retreats further and further into his own mind, finding safety only at home surrounded by his dogs. The world feels like a cold, hostile place to him, where every person he sees at a street corner could secretly be a murdering psychopath with a basement full of bodies. He can't walk past anybody at the supermarket without wondering what their secrets are, and contemplating getting inside their heads to find out. He always stops himself, however. Getting overly paranoid is dangerous in his line of work, and although Will was terrified of the big, wide world before Jack asked to borrow his twisted mind and is now even more so he can't afford to let it get the better of him.

"Sometimes, at night I leave the lights on in my little house and walk across the flat fields," he tells Hannibal in one of their therapy sessions. "And when I look back from a distance, the house is like a boat on the sea. It's really the only time I feel safe."

They often visit Abigail Hobbs in the hospital she's staying in. Will can't help but feel responsible for the girl, after she watched her mother die at her father's hands and then watched Will put six bullets in her father's chest and stomach. He can still remember kneeling on her kitchen floor, hands clutched desperately around the blonde's throat, trying to stop the gash on her neck where her father had slashed it from bleeding out. He'd panicked so much, then, and only when Hannibal had stepped in, eyes calm and hands ready to take over, that he'd felt some of his hysteria abiding.

Jack advises him against it, but he and Hannibal visit Abigail anyway. Garrett Jacob Hobbs was a psychopath but his daughter is just a victim, as far as Will can see. Jack doesn't trust her, suspects her of being an accomplice to her father's crimes, but Will ignores the older man's misgivings. He doesn't tell anyone this, but when he sees her he feels guilty for killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs, or the Minnesota Shrike as he's more commonly known. He sees her stare at him with hurt and judging eyes and wishes desperately that someone else could have pulled the trigger.

Alana studiously avoids being in a room with him alone, Will notices. He's had a sort of weird pseudo-crush on the female psychiatrist for as long as he's known her, although he's not juvenile or emotionally connected enough to classify it as a 'crush'. She intrigues him, and she's easy to talk to, not like with Hannibal where Will can be open and honest, but at the same time is aware that the other man is constantly playing a game, trying to manipulate the world to work just how he likes it. With Alana everything is simple, and she's one of the only people Will actually likes.

Beverly Katz is another matter entirely. Will wouldn't say they were friends, he doesn't think he's capable of forming such a bond with somebody, but she seems to understand him in a way that not even the two psychiatrists he knows do. Will can be himself with her, and doesn't feel under pressure to behave a certain way or feel like he has to keep parts of himself hidden from prying eyes. He can talk to her without fear of being judged or psychoanalysed, and whilst he's unsure where he and Beverly stand on the acquaintance/friend boundary he can say with assurance that he likes the feeling of just being himself.

Jack Crawford bothers Will somewhat, even though he trusts the head of the FBI more than he'd ever admit. The deeper into cases they get, the harder Jack pushes for answers, and the more Will feels he's losing himself.

"Are you trying to alienate me from Jack Crawford?" he asks Hannibal at one therapy session, after yet another series of probing questions. Whilst he's not sure that it's an overly good idea, Will can't help but admit that he's not too opposed to it. Will's mind is all he really has, and Jack's got complete control of that now. Whilst he knows full well that Jack is only trying desperately to help people, Will knows that he will squeeze every last drop of sanity from his already scattered and partially broken mind. Trouble is, he's not sure how much sanity he's got left to give.

Freddie Lounds is loud and brash and rude, and she mocks Will and calls him crazy. As she talks to Abigail Hobbs, Will can see the teenager slowly being to turn against him under the influence of Freddie's poisoned words. Everything she says feels like a thorn that pierces his skin, and as he watches Abigail's eyes darken just a fraction and the set of her shoulders stiffen he looks up at the sky and thinks _Don't enough people already hate me?_

He finds it odd that she trusts Hannibal more than him, although as he watches them interact Will knows that there's more to their bizarre father-daughter relationship than they're telling him. He still blindly refuses to believe a word that anyone says against Abigail, even when Alana voices her misgivings on multiple occasions.

"_She only demonstrated enough emotions to prove she had them,"_ he distantly remembers her saying when the topic of Garrett Jacob Hobbs's daughter first came up. Whilst he refuses to believe them, every time he sees the brunette they can't help but niggle at the back of his mind. Usually he silences the voice in the back of his head, however. Abigail is the only good thing in his life, the only pure and unblemished thing that hasn't yet been touched by the creeping tendrils of the horror that surround them all. It's easier for Will to pretend that she's an innocent, a victim whom he saved from a terrible death and rescued from an even more terrible life. She may have loved her father but Will knows that ultimately Hobbs' obsession would have gotten out of hand, and Abigail would have become the latest in a long line of the Minnesota Shrike's victims. He may not have Abigail's full trust but at least he gave her back her life.

When he finds out much later that she was involved, that she did help her father catch and murder those poor girls, Will goes home in a daze. He can't help but feel betrayed and angry, because someone that he once held so highly in his estimations has been ripped off her pedestal and turned into just another teenage girl, with secrets so dark it makes him shudder just to think about it.

The next time Abigail appears in his dreams the white dress she used to wear is ripped and bloody, and Will wakes up in a cold sweat, wondering when the last shreds of faith he had were ripped away from him.

Alana comes to his little house one night, and stands so prettily in his living room that Will can't help but kiss her. She smiles softly and kisses him back, but then steps back and shakes her head and tells him no, and Will knows that that was the only chance he ever had and now it's gone.

"It's because you're unstable," she tells him later, and if Will were anyone else he would have been offended, but he steps into her arms for a hug and heaves a sigh and nods and knows she's right.

Losing time is the most terrifying experience of Will's life. For weeks on end he walks around afraid to close his eyes, because he doesn't really know where he might be when he opens them. It carries on until he really can't take it anymore and begs to get tested, because he wants desperately to know if there's something wrong with him or if he's just going insane.

Hannibal takes him to see an old colleague of his, and after going through scanner after scanner Will emerges dazed and confused only to be told _There's nothing medically wrong with you_ and _Mental illness_. For the second time in his life Will's increasingly fragile world crumbles around him, as he realises that he can't be cured and that his mind's eating him alive from the inside out.

Much later, when Alana insists they scan his brain because she can't accept mental illness as an answer either, they find that Will has encephalitis, and with a frown he wonders why Hannibal's friend lied to him, why he was made to think that he was mentally ill. When he confronts Hannibal about it later, and every little manipulation of the doctor's comes to light, Will wonders how he could have been such a fool to not see this betrayal unfold. He's furious that his life has been destroyed in this way by someone he trusted, that he's got the FBI bearing down on him, accusing him of awful things like murder and that he can't see how to escape their clutches. Abigail's death still haunts him, and being framed for her murder pains him even more. In the end he's the one who takes the bullet instead of Hannibal, courtesy of Jack, and goes to prison for the good doctor too.

When his innocence is proved beyond doubt, and Hannibal's heavy involvement in all the horrors that have permeated Will's life since he was thrown back into the field what feels like a lifetime ago, so many other horrors come to light. When he's told that all he's been eating for the past few years is human flesh Will keels over and throws up all over the carpet in Jack's office, and wonders when he became so blind to the truth that was swimming before his eyes.

He visits Dr. Lecter in prison just once, the day after he puts him there. Will looks him right in the eye, walks as close to the bars as he can and whispers simply one word.

"Why?"


End file.
